Rough Tectonics Poem by Armadillo Poet

[The Qin dynasty,
ending 206 BC,
took with it the last
meaning of a word.]

I do not want there
to be other people at all.

Then I would be free
to battle the ant as I please.

Instead I am left
bartering with them
over the
relative racism
of different pronunciations
of the sugar.

I would like rather
to invent fire to
burn the feet of owls...

and dig up the creeping nests
of my stinging enemies until
I locate the queen.

Then taking her under
arm, I would trace with her
the fault lines down
to the sea where I would
make a hook;

and with her learn that even
the queen of ants
makes not better bait than
any other small
and wormy thing.

...But I mustn't have imagined any
ant too strange or altogether foreign,
even if they crawl under my floors.

Otherwise the fantasy would be wrongly oriented.